


'Cuz Fate is naturally perverse

by GwenChan



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alpha Austria (Hetalia), Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Angst, Dystopia, English translation, F/M, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Omega Prussia (Hetalia), Omega Verse, PruHun, PrusAus, Slavery, Translation, frying pangle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-22
Updated: 2016-04-22
Packaged: 2018-06-03 20:09:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6624487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GwenChan/pseuds/GwenChan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Despite appearances Gilbert Beilshmidt is an omega and when he is sold to alpha Roderich Edelstein resisting to the impulses of his inner nature becomes harder than expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	'Cuz Fate is naturally perverse

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Perché la Sorte è naturalmente perversa](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6614170) by [GwenChan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GwenChan/pseuds/GwenChan). 



> I wanted to write an omega-verse that was slightly different from the classical dynamics. Hope you enjoy. I am not english native speaker, so sorry for any mistake.

 

**'Cuz Fate is naturally perverse**

Gilbert still remembered what the world had been like before. Only five years had passed, but it seemed like a century. The majority of people had quickly adjusted, someone for fear, someone for taking an advantage, like a “before” had never existed.

Once the world had been civilized and stories about omega exploited and violated like things to buy and throw away when they broke, only reports in history books about a prehistoric and barbaric epoch. More than three centuries had passed since the current of thought which would have been known as Enlightenment had started to affirm the right to freedom of everyone, no matter if alpha, beta, or omega, and to inveigh against slavery. Already then, medicine produced the first suppressant-meds.

Since those first, shy attempts, steps had been a lot, albeit inconstant, to the arrival to a world where being an alpha, a beta, or an omega counted less than a shoe-number.

Apothecary shelves regurgitated with blockadings, contraceptives, and suppressant-meds in pills, sprays, Band-Aids, buccal solutions. There were even colourful, dinosaur-shaped suppressant-meds for children. There was no person that didn't have always with them the right drug for their group. There was no public place that didn't keep provisions in case of emergency. The government even used to donate suppressant-meds to who provided evidence of being too poor to buy them.

To be an alpha or an omega – beta lived a totally different existence – all reduced to having reproductive organs of one type or the other, no matter the biological gender, something that nobody cared about outside the private life of each one.

Yes, suppressant-meds were manna. No more heat-cycles that reduced the brain to the intellectual level of a one-celled amoeba. No more yearnings, no more uncontrollable desire of throwing themselves against the first alpha passing by just to reproduce the specie, no more pheromones that could be perceived kilometres away. Just thinking about that, Gilbert was shaken with shivers of disgust. The shivers intensified when he remembered how the world was slipping down the very same end. It rolled in a crazy avalanche.

He turned in the hard camp bed, staring at the ceiling of the cell. It wasn't properly a cell – officially it was one of the several rooms in the structure designed for the” security and well-being of omegas”, literal words of the Ministry of sanity – but the concept was the same. He burst in a squawking, joyless laugh for such hypocrisy. He would have spat on the ground to show again his scorn, but his mouth was dry. His own scent started to suffocate him. He hadn't taken a suppressant-med for two days, having finished those he had managed to save from search, and the effects started to be noticeable.

Scheisse.

 

Gilbert Beilshmidt was born an omega. He, who loved adventure, violence, war and who had an ego as big as the universe, was born an omega. For twenty years, the fact hadn't particularly limited him. Excluding a slightly delicate health and the presence of a persistent distinctive scent on the skin, that no drug could completely cancel, life had gone smoothly.

There was the interruption of the cell door opening without producing the littlest squeak and of a head in back light, whose features were hardly recognizable, that peered to check he was still alive. He grunted. In principle, he should have stayed in the structure for another couple of weeks, just until a new placement was found for him, in the home of a bachelor alpha to bond with. After his last attempt to escape, they put him in isolation.

He felt his body hairs stand up on his arms.

Gilbert never wanted to bond with anyone. On the one hand he considered the married life absolutely boring and as much suffocating; on the other hand it wasn't possible that somebody like him could choose to voluntarily submit to an alpha. Ridiculous.

In truth, there had been a couple of people who might have made him change his mind. Still, one, Elizavetha, an energetic beta, loathed him and the other, Feliciano, a sweet omega who used to forgot his suppressant-meds, grew fond like a pup of Gilbert’s little brother, Ludwig.

Elizavetha was a childhood friend, a tomboy in skirt always spoiling for a fight, sure that everyone would have become alpha once grown up. Her little developed sense of smell – drugs or not – didn't catch those details that made Gilbert's nostrils wrinkle.

He saw her again before the revolution, next to who had soon become her husband. Gilbert had never met till then a person less adept to be an alpha. He remembered to have thought that Roderich Edelstein, not him, should have been born an omega. Instead, Destiny wanted otherwise and now that toffee-nosed, aristocratic musician enjoyed life in his manor in Vienna, while – scheisse – Gilbert rotted in a cell.

 

 

Two weeks. In isolation. Without suppressant-meds. His own scent began to make him going crazy. He consumed as much shower gel as he was let to, but the more he rubs, the more the effort seemed useless. If his calculations were right, he wouldn't have gone into heat before some other months; however, the possibility that the absence of drugs distorted the timing wasn't to be excluded. Normally heat cycles arrived and passed with no damage. Omegas were trained to catch the first heat signals and to take the right drugs before the situation deteriorated. A little headache was all that remained as counter-indication.

If he had been able to exit from there still in full possession of his metal faculties, Gilbert wouldn't have wasted time before putting his hands on the first available suppressant-med. He swore this to himself.

Or he would have locked himself in the janitor. Or in bathroom. Or in any other place far from the reach of the alphas. He would have even killed himself by biting his tongue. Anything to avoid that yarn that was heat.

No. No and no.

 

Days passed slow and monotonous. Apparently, to find a new placement for him was harder than expected. For this the rare visits were welcomed with glad. Not that Gilbert received many of them. Actually, besides his brother Ludwig – plus Feliciano – nobody had come. That afternoon however, the door of the cell opened for two new guests. Gilbert sat, while a familiar but never so strong whiff hit him.

“I thought you forgot me!” he whined. The voice was less harsh than he would like.

“Sorry, friend, it was harder than we have estimated.”  
“Right, you didn’t lose time to cause a ruckus, did you?” a second man echoed, coming nearer. Instinctively Gilbert moved back, burying his nose in the T-shirt. Until that day the fact that his friend Antonio Carriedo was an alpha had never worried him at all. His scent had never annoyed him. Now, however, he couldn't avoid finding it inviting, too inviting. He gulped several times, covering his face with hands.

“Maybe it’s better if you move away.”

The first man held Antonio from his shoulder. “We brought you suppressant-meds,” he added, breaking with nails the stitches of a secret pocket inside the sleeve of his jacket and throwing a small packet to Gilbert. There were five pills, enough for another months doing a little economy.

“Francis, Antonio, I owe you my life.”  
He swallowed a pill, and then he smirked. “Not that I expected anything less.

Fifteen minutes after Gilbert could sustain that Antonio sat next to him with almost no bother. God, he missed that sensation of control. He didn't lose time to ask news about the outside world, the latest reforms; he asked if the UN had finally decided to condemn what was happening in Europe. Too bad news wasn't good. Finally, he couldn't hold himself from exclaiming “Get me out of here!”

“It isn’t so easy, friend. I have already my problems with Lovino.”

Lovino was Feliciano’s older brother, an omega too.

“Lovino? Don’t tell me they took him!”

“Luckily I managed to avoid that.”

Antonio broadly told him to have bribed some policy agents to show that Lovino Vargas was bonded with the alpha Carriedo. The boy wasn't happy about the news – to be shown as an alpha’s property wasn't much more different from being in house arrest lately – but in the end, after a lot of swearing, he convinced himself that it was still better than to be sold.

“Luckily he still had some of my smell on him” Carriedo concluded. Gilbert diverted his attention to Francis. As a beta he was the one with fewer problems among the three of them.

“And the hysteric big-eyebrow?” he asked. He could have sworn to see Francis jawbone contract as he formulated the answer. “Alfred took him under his tutelage. They left for Washington the day before yesterday.”

He didn't add anything else, but the not-said were more explicit than words.

When Antonio and Francis were forced to say goodbye to Gilbert, he had the clear and unpleasant feeling that they wouldn't have met for a long time.

A couple of day after the news that he had been replaced arrived. In hearing the name of his new host – master – Gilbert thought it was a joke. Still there was no doubt.

Before leaving the building, he assured to have the remaining suppressant-meds with him, thinking that maybe becoming a legal property of the Edelsteins, despite not being a great perspective, was better than other scenario.

After all, it could have been worse.

 

The night journey from Germany to Vienna, on a high-speed train, lasted few hours, during which a surly beta never left him. Looking outside the window, with cheek on the glass to have some cool, Gilbert wondered how much time should he have to spend away from home before his brother managed to repatriate him.

Nevertheless, if they believed a month in a cell was enough to make him docile and obedient, they couldn't have been more wrong. He threw an arrogant sight to his “bodyguard”, and then he put his feet on the little divider table and closed his eyes.

Pictures of his first encounter with Roderich passed confusingly under his eyelids, in a succession of unrelated scenes, except for knowing they all belonged to the same evening. Edelstein was a musician, the only heir of a rich Austrian family, enough to allow him to live off. It wasn't a surprise that Elizavetha had known him during a concert and had presented him to Gilbert in a similar context.

Roderich was delicate. He had long and tapered fingers – Gilbert had held them with too much enthusiasm – gentle (aka boring) manners, the air of someone who would die if he had ever been forced to work. Not that he risked it happened. Just being an alpha was enough to save him from misery.

It was one of the young beta maids of the Edelstein-Hédérvary’s manor to welcome Gilbert. Not that he expected to find the couple waiting for him, especially when his arrival from the train station was scheduled for dawn. Sun hadn't come out yet from behind the horizon and the sky had just started to change from a deep black to a more welcoming purple when a porter took his scrawny suitcase into custody and the omega was escorted in what was to become his bedroom. It smelled nice, clean, of lavender and soap, of something neuter. Above all, there were no traces of alpha pheromones. Gilbert breathed at the top of his lungs.

There was a wardrobe where he found a series of clothes more or less his size. Without hesitation he put on a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt, to abandon the uniform from his prison; he made a ball of it and threw it against the opposite wall with a kick. Putting the suppressants into one of the pockets, he returned to examine the bedroom, a bit empty but cozy. All in all Gilbert liked it. He preferred a Spartan style to useless gimmick.

To kill time, he rummaged in the drawers of the night table. He found nothing interesting in the first three, besides pennies and bits and pieces; the fourth one, however, revealed a surprise. At first sight, it could have seemed even less special than the precedent, empty and covered by a veil of dark dust that rose in a cloud making him sneeze. A more attentive exam revealed the presence of a groove in the bottom, big enough to put there a nail to leverage, so to give access to a secret compartment. It didn't contain anything interesting, but Gilbert rushed in hiding there his pills. After than he threw himself on the bed, without undressing and, besides all, he fell asleep.

 

When one of the several servants – all rigorously beta – he had glimpsed in the manor knocked at the door, waking him and delivering to him the news that the “masters were ready to receive him” – Gilbert struggled to hold back an evil laugh for a similar protocol – the sun was already high in the sky. He rearranged himself somehow, he weighted the idea of assuming another suppressant, discarding it, finally he followed the maid assuring to make as much noise as possible. He didn't miss the opportunity to use the journey to admire the house, showing his appreciation through long whistles. A more attentive exam would have revealed that behind the apparent luxury picked walls and tapestries corroded by woodworms hid, that many pieces of furniture needed a restoration and that a thin coat of oxidation covered the mirrors. That morning, however, Gilbert only thought that the Edelsteins treated themselves well. Roderich's clothing choices demonstrated it.

Neither him nor Elizavetha had changed much from how Gilbert remembered them. The woman seemed to want to incinerate him with a sight. Her husband stared at him with the annoyed air of a king giving audience to the last beggar of the day.

Gilbert listened little to what they told him, in a superficial way, partial and bored, in a mass of words where, sometimes, one slightly more interesting than the others jumped out. They told him what he could do, what he couldn't do – he hadn't the real intention to obey – they informed him he would have been given suppressants and other similar drugs in abundance. That was enough.

Gilbert was smart enough to understand – foresee – how they didn't tell him everything, but he wore thin his eyes and nodded, already racking his brain on how making his permanence there profitable. Being just an object to be exposed didn't enthusiasm him by no means.

 

It was Elizavetha to clarify how things really were. The woman knocked at his bedroom door that very same evening – dinnertime had just passed – proud and haughty like a lioness. Brown hair fell down in a cascade of waves on her shoulders and back, decorated with just a simple flower pin, and the skirt on green tones brushed against the floor, rising at every step to show a pair of leather little boots to her ankles. She smelled nicely and it was her smell as a person, not as a beta.

“I thought I have never seen your face again, Gilbert!” she exclaimed. The calm tone hid an unexpected fury for a person of her size and Gilbert knew it well. He could swear to still feel the pain of the bump Elizavetha caused him a lot of years before, hitting him with a frying pan behind his cape. He instinctively scratched it.

“I reciprocate the feeling, Liz” he replied, seraphic. He wouldn't have been surprised if Elizavetha had thrown a frying pan toward him in that precise moment. They threw other cutting remarks to each other, many of which escaped the man’s mind in few hours. The fact was that, at a certain point, Elizavetha, after having reiterated for the nth-time how there was no stick in the mud bigger, more boring, unpleasant, heavier (and about other ten adjectives of similar nature) than Gilbert Beilshmidt, pronounced an unhappy comment of his nature as an omega.

“Do you think I am a pansy? Just because Nature choose I was meant to born li-like this?” he snarled, impolitely catching her wrist. He attired her to him in a demonstration of that strength people thought he didn't have, in a violent kiss. Elizavetha didn't hesitate to push him away, and then she slapped him twice with open hand, once for cheek.

“You are a horrible person!”  
“What’s the matter? Are you afraid I may take your beloved hubby from you? He noticed how little feminine you are?” he urged in seeing the woman wavering under his insinuations. Elizavetha seemed to want to break barehanded the wooden headboard of the bed for how much she grasped it. Teeth tormented her pink lips and under her beautiful green eyes there were two eye-bags Gilbert hadn't noticed before. Finally, she gave up.

“You are right,” she admitted, like her mouth was full of sand. “I am infertile. You know, it is not rare with betas.”

She had just started to open up and already Gilbert didn't like the trend the discourse was assuming. “Roderich doesn't care to have children or not, but his parents think differently from him. They fear the family would extinguish. They convinced him to take an omega, threatening him that if he hadn't obeyed, they would make the wedding null.”  


No. No. It wasn't good at all. “And that aristocrat didn't have the courage to oppose.”

Gilbert laughed, in a noisy and hissing way. Again, the irony and the cruelty of fate, which wanted to assign the roles to the show-of-life not on merit basis but according to chance, were slapped on his face.

“Obviously it will be only a façade” Elizavetha started again, like Gilbert had never interrupted her. “Roderich would never get this low.”  
“Neither I would allow him to do so. I have no intention to be a child-producing machine.”  
Rather, death.

The mask of confidence resisted barely the time to see the woman exit, closing the door behind her with a slam maybe too violent. Then the opinionated smile abandoned Gilbert lips. The man frenetically, like his life depended on that, rummaged in the driver to recover the suppressants. Despite the reassurance about how he would have received others, despite Elizavetha reassurance that his presence was only a formality, Gilbert couldn't hold himself from swallowing all the three remaining pills in a single shot. Then he posed his elbows on the knees and held his head. To be a way to reproduce the specie … No. No and no.

There were omegas that, even without pheromones, couldn't wait to have litters of pups to raise and cuddle. Gilbert didn't belong in the same category. He kicked the wardrobe with a great ruckus, till he felt pain.

 

Life in the Edelsteins’ manor was less terrible than expected. As promised, he was fed suppressants in abundance and he had a more than acceptable level of freedom. Despite not being strictly forbidden, it was recommended that Gilbert didn't venture alone outside the estate borders, so he spent much of his days in long explorations of the property. He never missed the opportunity to annoy Roderich. Or he stayed in his bedroom doing almost nothing, while bric-a-bracs of any kind accumulated on the floor.

He could also use the phone and he used every occasion available to make long international calls, with the excuse he wasn't the one who has to pay the bill.

Excluding Ludwig and Feliciano, Francis and Antonio were his main interlocutors.

 

The phone calls always followed a precise scheme. It all started speaking about stupid things, telling some funny anecdotes, sometimes throwing some cruel little remarks regarding Roderich; still they always ended discussing more serious subjects. It was during one of those calls that Gilbert, having finished the usual conversation material, asked: “And Arthur?”  
Arthur was an English omega, unpleasant and snob, but for whom Francis had a preference. On the other side of the phone there was a long silence, interrupted just by few coughs; when the beta decided to answer, the falsity of his nonchalance was palpable. “I met him a couple of weeks ago. He smelled alpha from a mile. Even I noticed it.”

He smacked his lips to express his disgust. It wasn't the fact that Arthur had sex with another man to annoy him – he himself was a wild supported of free love – but that the Englishman have been forced forever into a forced monogamy. He had become Alfred’s property, like his smell proved, and this would have been such until his death, no matter if the head and the heart agreed of not.

Gilbert never touched the subject anymore. Some time later he asked the same thing to Antonio, in a mixture of curiosity and worrying in wondering if the eldest of the Vargas was still the hothead he had once been.

“More or less” was what his received as an answer.

“Like what more or less? Fuck, Antonio, speak clearly. Don’t tell me you allow them to put their filthy hands on Lovino!”

A pause. Then: “No. It’s just …”  
“Scheisse, Antonio, you are an alpha, but you whine like an omega.”

“I bonded with Lovino, are you happy now?” Antonio lost it with voice deepening of a couple of octaves. It was almost the raspy whisper of a hellish spirit. If Gilbert had had a little of consideration, he would have not deepened the subject, but he didn't have it. “Tell me what happened.”

Another pause, shorter than the precedent. Some words in Spanish whose tone left no doubt that it wasn't stuff for kind ears.

“He cried. He cried while and after. It was his idea, I swear, of having sex, but I am sure he regretted it in the very moment we reached the point. And you know what is the more terrible thing? That I didn’t care. Lovino was crying and the only thing I was able to think about was that he had to be mine, only mine. Mine omega. Four hours, four fucking hours we remained bonded on my knot.”  
Phone calls ceased to be funny and they became rarer and rarer, until they almost completely stop.

 

Life could have continued in that manner for a long time still, at least until the news Ludwig had the documents to make Gilbert repatriate ready had arrived, if it hadn't been for the Edelsteins senior arrival as host of their only son. They were a couple that impersonated well the alpha-omega stereotype. She was small, delicate and submissive. He was tall, big and bossy. He didn't assume suppressants, he had never assumed them even before they had become illegal, and he didn't hide how he considered the coup-d’état as one of the best thing happened in the last fifty years. His smell was strong, and Gilbert could feel it clearly despite his own suppressants.

It happened that, already annoyed for the absence of news announcing the incoming arrival of a litter of nephews – after almost six months it was time it happened – the old spouses noticed that Gilbert didn't show the littlest sign of having been marked by their son as his only property; that his scent was weaker that it should have been considering his nature and the period of the year. Despite Elizavetha efforts to maintain the appearance, despite Roderich's weak and ridiculous attempts to convince his parents that all was going for the best, they discovered the deceit.

They found the provisions of drugs and suppressants that Roderich silly kept in a single place, the classic cabinet in the bathroom. Maybe he was convinced he shouldn't fear anything. Instead, the drugs were discovered and destroyed, made into dust under the shoe heels, threw in the toilet, burnt. The Band-Aid became confetti and syrups slid down the drain of the sink. They couldn't find only the few pills Gilbert bore on himself. After all that, the Edelsteins left, with the expression of someone who had just buried a dear passed away, declaring they were disappointed beyond any reason, threatening to denounce them to the police, and assuring they would have disowned their degenerated son if he had continued to escape his duties as an alpha. Meanwhile, they blocked his bank account.

 

When he knew what happened, Gilbert at first produced just a giggle of superiority, small, but that rose quickly into a hysteric squeaking.

Among all the things, what really sent him over the edge what the image of that fucking aristocrat who continued to re-adjust his glasses, repeating excuses Gilbert didn't want to hear. If he had ever had doubts, in that instant he was sure: Roderich wasn't an alpha, nor he would have ever been one.

“We'll buy other drugs” Elizavetha affirmed with the usual energy – it was clear who wore the pants in that house – hands on his hips and tone that didn't admit reply, but that contained also a touch of sweetness, of the friend with whom Gilbert had spent long childhood afternoons. Choosing for once to try to clear the air, she sat next to him and put a hand on his shoulder. Silently.

“You know it isn’t true.”

“I never thought you were a pansy.  
“That’s a little consolation.”

He paid his ingratitude with a well-placed punch in his arms: Elizavetha had the precision of a surgery and the strength of a heavyweight.

Like Gilbert had foreseen, finding new black-market suppressants became impossible. It seemed like they had disappeared from Vienna, from Austria, from Europe, from the world. If before the name Edelstein with a good amount of money – sure that Roderich made those delicate little hands of him filthy with bribery – was enough to open many doors down in the black-market, now they produced the opposite effect. There was no doubt that the Edelsteins had moved the right strings. Gilbert had only two pills left. He broke them in half and, surprising even himself, he consigned them to Elizavetha with the prayer of giving him one half per week, no matter how much he prayed for a bigger dose. This way he could manage to survive another month, hoping it was enough.

In those days it happened frequently that Gilbert tried to hold on Elizavetha tight in rough embraces and to kiss her, with no affection. The bruisers he got, the sense of guiltiness that he always felt after, the disgust for himself didn't stop him.

Meanwhile they succeed in finding a Chinese provider, an old omega with a childish voice named Wang Yao, but he wouldn't have been able to deliver the drugs before three months. When Elizavetha gave him the last half pill, Gilbert knew it was over. For the first time he tasted the sneaky flavour of defeat with no honour; he thought about his family, about how much he missed how life had been once upon a time, and cried. He blamed the fact of being an omega.

Three months were too long; soon the heat would have come.

 

 

It happened during dinner, the only meal Roderich insisted to be consumed together. At first it was an almost imperceptible shiver, but that made it difficult to hold the fork, a kind of dryness on the lips, despite the continuous glasses of water swallowed, the first pangs in the groin. Above all, it was the scent. Eldelstein alpha perfume wrapped him, sneaky, and it was so damn good. Gilbert wondered why he hadn't noticed it before. A lacquer of cold sweat covered arms, as much as to make the shirt cloth stick to the skin, and brow, while sight went cloudy and tongue suddenly became too big for the thing space in his mouth.

Gilbert remembered to have got up by one step, throwing a sidelong sight to Roderich to assure he hadn't noticed anything, that he hadn't noticed anything _yet –_ he saw him wrinkling his nose with nails pierced in his legs, face traversed by a spasm, all under Elizavetha's eyes – and to have escaped, God knows how, in his bedroom.

The more terrible thing at first was the scent. The scent, Roderich's scent, not his scent as a person, but his alpha scent, was everywhere. When Gilbert understood it filtrated from under the door, he rushed to close the split with twisted sheets. Then he tore his room apart, in the vain hope to find surviving suppressants. He searched with anger even in the secret compartment in the night table and in finding it empty, he violently shook it.

He messed up the wardrobe, he overturned the mattress, he tore it into pieces; he searched under the bed, behind the furniture, everywhere, with increasing urgency, before it was too late.

The search went on until he had enough lucidity to stay focused on the mission. When heat exploded, even the space for that was denied. It lasted a week, with a peak on the third day, and it was like an agony as long as an existence. It wasn't dissimilar from a withdrawal.

Muscles deep inside him contracted around the void, with the brain reduced to a single, simple, animal-like desire to fill that hole.

Gilbert remembered to have tried to distract himself, unable to stay still for more than few seconds. He tried to recite rhymes, to repeat multiplication tables, to walk, to sit, to lay down, on his belly, on his back. Still his mind always returned to that single obsession: to be taken by an alpha, to be filled, held, possessed, and inflated. Minutes dilated to infinity.

On the second day, a maid had the unpleasant ides to throw open the door Gilbert had so carefully seal, to bring him food. Right away Roderich's mellow scent hit him, pleasant as the promise of fresh water for a castaway in the desert, filing his mouth with pasty saliva. A kind of dirty slick trickled between his legs. He had to use all his surviving power of will to not tear his clothes apart and chase the Austrian perfume, to pray him on his knees to subjugate him, to hold him for hours on his knot, to give him the possibility to bear his babies.

When heat ended, finally, when he had lost all hopes, when he noticed he could again control his body, Gilbert didn't hesitate to throw himself in the shower. He hadn't washed for days and sweat and other liquids had encrusted on his skin, in a disgusting way.

Despite the appearances and the mess that ruled in his bedroom, Gilbert liked cleanness.

He stayed under the hot jet until it became cold and again, again, like he wanted to drown. When he closed the tap he had consumed water for a week, but at least he felt clean. He noticed to be hungry. So he went to the kitchen, ignoring the exclamation of surprise from the maids, he threw the sideboard open and with no further a do, he emptied half of what it contained.

Suppressants arrived, irony of the fate, the day after. Gilbert swallowed two without thinking.

 

“You sure can try to do something.”

Lie on the couch, Gilbert unplugged a single ear and raised a little his head to look in the eyes who had disturbed him. Heat seemed just a bad memory.

“You sure are a pain in the ass, Roddy” he smirked, sitting up. Edelstein’s scent was back to normal. His condescending aristocratic manners persisted. In looking at him, Gilbert found himself curious to discover if the heat had changed him too, forcing him to abandon the mask he wore with everyone.

The idea was ridiculous and hilarious.

“Wh-why are you laughing?” Roderich protested, covering with hands his delicate ears. It would have been a tragedy if his extremely acute hearing was damaged.

“You are so damn funny,” Gilbert answered. He noted with pleasure that the other cheeks were dying in pale red. It didn't matter whether for anger or embarrassment. He was funny with that tuft of air pointing up like a charm, because he persisted to wear clothes from another epoch.

Funny and annoying.

Gilbert couldn't explain why he acted so. The most plausible hypothesis was that he wanted to avenge himself, but fact is that he got up, he yanked Roderich head in a short and harsh kiss. He could feel the taste of blood.

He cleaned his lips with tongue, while Roderich rubbed his nose with the back of the hand, his violet eyes half-closed. The black of the dilated pupil was evident, though.

“What do you want?”

Gilbert made a wondering face. “I want a flute,” he answered after a moment of reflection. The young master looked at him dubiously. Almost scandalized. Who had ever thought he was capable of elaborating certain double-senses.

“To do what?”  
“I want to shove it in you aristocratic little ass. What kind of questions are these? I want to play it!”

“You can play the flute?” Roderich was so surprised he wasn't affected by the insult. If it hadn't been for the unbearable fact of adjusting the glasses on his nose, he would have been almost nice.

“And I can also read and write” Gilbert replied with a thirty-two teeth smile dripping irony. Roderich nodded, with a solemn air, more rigid than a mannequin, and left. He returned earlier than expected though, only half an hour later, throwing a coat to Gilbert. It was a half size too small.

“Put it on” Roderich ordered, “It still has some of my scent, it should be enough.”  
“No thanks, I don’t want second hand clothes.”

“Put it on, Gilbert, for heaven sake.”  
Oh, if only he had blinded himself with the bow of his damned glasses.

With reluctance, Gilbert inserted his left arm in the sleeve of the coat. The cloth was surprisingly comfortable.

“And why?”  
“We go to town.”

“Why?”

“To buy a flute, come on, Gilbert.”

 

“Gilbert thought that if he had had the possibility to commit all the murders imagined in the last half an hour, he would have done a massacre. There was no alpha, man, woman, or child, that, in seeing him with Roderich and smelling his scent, didn't address him with a chuffed smile of satisfaction. It was almost like his existence depended on the judgement of the community. If he had had the possibility to grab any single alpha who dilated his nostril when he had passed by, like a damn bloodhound, and to crash his head against the pavement to reduce it to a mush, he wouldn't have hesitated.

Gilbert had visited Vienna three times. The first with his family as a child – his parents died in a car crash soon afterwards – the second during a school trip, already a teenager, and the third for one of Roderich's concert. He remembered little of the city, just some elements, the most distinctive, those that ended up in post card and travel brochures; beyond that façade Vienna was a mystery. On the contrary Roderich knew it with the sureness of who was born and grew up in the same place. He was wrapped in his high collar jacket, dark ochre, oblivious to the stares of the others – or maybe he was just used to them. He guided Gilbert to his usual music shop, a small but airy place, managed by an old, fat, and bald alpha.

Gilbert wondered if he had to add him to his secret list of homicides. After all, one more wouldn't have made the difference.

“What kind of flute you would like to buy?” the man asked when the situation was explained to him. He set of the lock of a leather truck, in which seven silver flutes of various thicknesses and lengths were ordinarily disposed. Even in dim light they shone.

Gilbert looked at them for a long time, with brown traversed by a vertical wrinkled between his eyebrows. He lightly touched some of them, he weighted other, and finally he indicated the third from the left.

“This one” he answered with no further hesitation. He was asked if he wanted to try it. He nodded.

He had learnt to play that instrument as a child, proving a unsuspected talent, like for many other things, and albeit he had never continued beyond an amateur level, he hadn't forgotten the gestures. So it happened that, sometimes, he took again the instruments.

He checked that it was in tune, and then he brought it to his lips and blew air. It produced a high-pitched, hissing sound. He ignored the interrogative, almost piteous stares of the presents. He tried again, repositioning the flute. This time a limpid and clear sound came out. He peered above the instrument and the Roderich's ridiculously wide-open mouth was the best thing of the day.

The very same evening, he didn't miss the chance to show off with Elizavetha, pompous and sure like a young cock in the roost, sometimes agitating the flute like it was a weapon, sometimes actually playing it, improvising unknown but still gracious ballads. It was then that Gilbert really started to accept if not his condition, at least the fact that it would have continued for a long time.

After all, life in the house of the Edelstein-Hédérvary wasn't so terrible. Other months passed without noteworthy warnings and without the documents for his repatriate ready. He had almost stopped to ask about them on the phone, in hearing his brother voice being more and more annoyed on the other side. Other times, it was sorry. Gilbert used to laugh, assuring he wasn't in a hurry by no means. It acquired the habit of wearing some of Roderich’s shabby clothes – the rare shabby clothes that the Austrian decided to throw away, because, if it had been for him, he would have continued forever by mending them – and to go out, protected by the traces of alpha scent.

It wasn't rare, however, that, during those walks, he stopped to think about what may have happened if, suddenly, he had decided to proceed. What if he had decided to walk beyond the city borders, beyond the Austrian borders, to home? The fact that it was an almost impossible mission never touched him. After all was he or wasn't he the most awesome person on Earth?

What a pity that even awesome people like him couldn't escape the curse of sudden storms.

 

“Look at you” Roderich exclaimed, in seeing him all soaked, like a wet chick. Gilbert was dripping on the good carpet, leaving a humid stain that was becoming larger and larger. He shook his head like a big dog, muttering an imprecation between his teeth about having forgotten his umbrella, but he was interrupted by the first sneeze. Right, his weak health.

“I’ll call someone to prepare you a hot bath or you may take a pneumonia” Roderich remarked. Elizavetha had gone out shopping with a Ukrainian friend, a sweet motherly alpha with a big bosom. For answer Gilbert pouted and crossed arms on the chest. “I don’t want _someone_. If you have to pretend you are my alpha, then do things right!”

Roderich sighted, the kind of long, half exasperated and half resigned sight of when a particular musical passage didn't come out like he wanted. “All right.”

 

Once in the bathroom, Gilbert couldn't avoid commenting about the absurd amount of haircare products that Roderich had.

“Scheisse, young master, you have more stuff than your wife!” he exclaimed, studying the labels of the products, while the bathtub was filling with hot and soapy water. He saw the Austrial rolling up the sleeves of his shirt to his elbows. “Admit it, you were looking forward to seeing such a show” he added, undressing and immersing. He caused a little tsunami in a chaos of spurts. Then he offered his head, showing the neck still without any mark, with knees against his chest, resurfacing from the water surface. Even through the soap bubbles his slim body could be seen, with well-defined muscles and just an imperceptible touch of curves on the hips, typical of all omegas.

Roderich fingers moved on his head like they were playing the piano in the living room and, all considered, it was pleasant to be taken care off in that way, not having to think about anything,

He thought the fob wasn't so useless.

Without saying a word he stared with his reddish-purple eyes into the other amethyst eyes, before raising an arm from under the surface of water, breaking its stillness, and bringing it up, in an arc of drops, till he grasped Roderich’s tie. He attired him, until their lips were just few millimetres one from the other. Gilbert smiled with defiance, ignoring the other protests for the wet clothes and the uncomfortable position. After that he was about to withdraw, but at that point it was Roderich to nab him again, with fingers between Gilbert's tufts of silver hair, and to close his mouth with a kiss. “This is like a kiss should be” he seemed to say, because he had soft lips, he was warm and good. He tasted like alpha. He tasted like alpha and, despite how much he struggled to fight it, Gilbert’s omega essence appreciated it and wanted more.

It was like it should have been if he had accepted his nature.

But he wouldn't have done it.

Without interrupting the kiss, he stopped Roderich's hand, still suspended in mid-air, while its twin had opened to grab his shoulder blade, slick with soap. He detached and mimed a “no” with his head.

“Don’t try it. I know I'm better than your wife, but … with inverted roles, maybe. Like this, no.”

Then, like nothing had happened, he bended his head again to let the Austrian wash it.

It was the most intimate moment they had. Gilbert considered a fortune that Elizavetha hadn't been present with her damned frying pan.

 

Thus, when, after many weeks, the woman woke him up in the middle of the nigh, Gilbert believed she had discovered all and wanted to kill him by strangulation. Or frying pan-tion. He half-opened an eyelid, muttered a “what is happening?” with a sleepy voice and tried to elaborate an excuse to save his ass.

“I swear the kiss was your hubby’s idea” he mumbled, sitting and evaluating how much the sheets would have been effective as a defensive weapon.

“What kiss?”

Was it his impression or Elizavetha seemed more intrigued than angry? “Nothing” he rushed to deny. “But what the hell do you want at three in the morning?” he asked, sleepy. He struggled to keep his eyes open.

“You have to leave!”

“You reinvented the wheel. I’ll do it as soon as possible.”

“No, you have to leave now.”

“Eliza, I consider you a smart woman, but as I have already said, it is three in the morning.”

Elizavetha switched on the lamp posed on the night table, showing a face that was more worried than Gilbert had thought. She wasn't joking. Maybe, _maybe_ , it was better to slid outside the covers. While he tried to put on his pants with no success, until he noticed he was putting two legs in a single hole, Elizavetha summarized the reasons why it was imperative that he moved out before dawn.

The infamous Roderich’s parents had announced a non-programmed visit; it didn't take a genius to understand that if they had discovered – no doubt it would have happened – the very same situation of the previous time they would have not limited to destroy all suppressants for miles around.

“I hope your hubby learnt his lesson. Come on, Liza, I hid enough suppressants in my room to survive for weeks. They won’t find them” he tried to calm her down. Buttons and buttonholes had always been so rebellious? She violently shook her head, while she was filling a bag – it was a mystery where and when she picked it out – when clothes and other useful objects in bulk. “For once, act like an adult! You’re in danger.”

“I believed you wanted me dead.”

“I’m convinced the world would be a quieter place without you, but in truth I don’t think I would like a quiet world much.”

The last part of the answer was covered by the noise of the zip being closed. Only then Elizavetha signalled him to be silent and to follow her. Gilbert carried the bag, hitting the flute posed on the night table. It rolled on the floor like a moon tear.

Surely they talked more in those few, agitated, moments than in all the previous year. Among the many things they said, the woman warned him against a Slavic alpha, a bloodhound specialized in hunting down and capturing recidivist omega, as much childish as cruel. “And let me guess, the lovely Eldestein spouses may use this Braginsky?”

“I see that you can use your brain if you want.”

And other discourses. The only thing Gilbert didn't ask – after years he was still not able to say because he forgot it or because he didn't want to know it - was how Roderich and Elizavetha would have survived. Maybe he told himself that an alpha and a beta didn't have survival problems and, after all, Elizavetha could set an army of male horny alphas straight using just a frying pan.

They walked down the humid night streets of Vienna to a café without any distinctive signs, if not for the presence of a man in a red coat, waiting with hands in his pockets. Gilbert inhaled air: omega.

“You are late, Hédérvary” the unknown man welcomed them. He spoke with a strong Romanian accent. He stepped forward, to be illuminated by the light of the nearest street light, revealing a sharp but jovial face. When he smiled, his canines shone like fangs.

“A woman is never late, Vlad. Do you have the documents?”

“And do you have the money?”

“Vlad!”

“Just joking, just joking. So, is he?”  
The omega named Vlad pointed at Gilbert, who was staying aloof.

“Yes, treat him well.”  
“Is he your friend?”  
“He’s one of my enemies.”

“Then we’ll get along.”

Vlad signalled to Gilbert to follow him. He obeyed. He didn't turn his back, but limited to move an arm above his head to say goodbye. He knew Elizavetha was still behind him, like a holy guardian.

Some years later he came to know that Roderich and Elizavetha had divorced, especially for Roderich’s family fault, plus more and more vibrant divergences in opinion. Gilbert had always said that Elizavetha wasn't meant for marriage.

He weighted the idea of writing a letter to the woman, but discarded it. There would have been time to talk it out if ever the fate had wanted to make them meet again.

Vlad made him escape in Switzerland, where he spent three years. At first as host of a couple of beta siblings, brother and sister, and then from house to house, just the time for his repatriation being organized.

In seeing the train crossing the German border, Gilbert felt his heart clutching almost painfully, with nose pressed on the window like a child in front of a candy shop. He had been away for only four years, but it seemed like a century had passed. He arrived in Berlin late in the morning, in a biting day of January, with a clean sky and some snowflakes falling

He hadn't his keys anymore, but he perfectly remembered where the set of keys of reserve was. He grabbed it and opened the door with ease.

“I am home.”


End file.
